Kohl’s rolled out a pilot program in October 2017 through which merchandise returns on Amazon purchases are accepted at 82 stores across the Los Angeles and Chicago metros. Ten of those stores also include a beta test for Amazon Smart Home Experience stores. These 1,000-square-foot store-in-store units sell Amazon’s Fire TV, Echo Dot and similar devices. The program has been effective in driving foot traffic to Kohl’s stores, both before and after the holiday season, as former Kohl’s CEO Kevin Mansell would often point out.

Others saw the potential too. “It was definitely a symbiotic relationship, and I think it taught the retail industry that this can work and [that] there can be positives for a legacy physical retailer to partner with Amazon,” said Ben Conwell, senior managing director and practice leader of Cushman & Wakefield’s commerce advisory group.

Sears Holdings began selling its Kenmore appliances on Amazon.com in 2017. In May the company announced that it would provide a ship-to-store option at Sears Auto Center stores as well as installation and balancing services for customers buying any brand of tires on Amazon. Sears also agreed to sell its own DieHard all-season tires on the Amazon marketplace. The agreement initially started with 47 Sears Auto Centers across eight metro areas and with plans to expand the service to the company’s roughly 400 U.S. automobile centers.

From Amazon’s perspective, the main thing behind these partnerships was the removal of any friction points for customers wanting the option to visit a store to return or pick up an item, or to shop for Amazon label items physically and in person. “For Amazon, it’s an acknowledgement of their need to be a little closer to the customer, to have a physical presence and be able to satisfy the customer’s more pressing needs on a day-to-day basis,” said Joseph Feldman, a senior managing director and assistant director of research at New York City–based Telsey Advisory Group.

The Sears partnership also opens up possibilities to bring even more products and retailers to the Amazon marketplace, where installation assistance might be needed for certain goods. “You’re solving that obstacle and making it easier for customers to buy products like tires online if the customer knows there is a reputable, capable service available to install them,” said Conwell. It is very likely that the retail industry could see similar partnerships emerging in the future, he says.

For retailers, there are pros and cons to partnership with Amazon. The instances in which such an alliance can help generate additional foot traffic and incremental sales at stores are surely positive. “The partnership, especially with Sears, will bring both foot traffic and business into Sears that might not previously have been going to Sears,” said Natalie Kotlyar, national leader of the retail and consumer-products practice group at New York City–based BDO. “I think that is an introduction of new customers and new potential buyers that Sears might not have seen.”

There is some downside risk. Customers may walk into Kohl’s and return very large and bulky items that take up a lot of space, for instance, and then walk out without making any additional purchases. “We also don’t know the nature of any of the deals in terms of what cost each side is bearing, and how that’s all going to play out,” said Feldman.

“The key here for retailers is to ensure that they are benefiting from this partnership as well,” said Kotlyar. “They need to understand that Amazon is not a lifeline and any partnership with Amazon has to be strategic, and [that] they have to understand where the benefit lies for them.”

Certainly, Amazon can operate that same store-in-a-store and return-center model within its own Whole Foods stores. But partnership with other retailers allows Amazon to extend its reach beyond its roughly 350 Whole Foods stores across the U.S., Canada and the U.K.

And Amazon continues to test a variety of ideas, in its own brick-and-mortar stores and through retail partnerships. “Amazon has the financial wherewithal to test whatever it wants to do, and there has been an increasing number of competitors that are trying to partner with Amazon,” said Feldman.

Best Buy and Amazon announced a partnership in April to bring the next generation of Amazon’s Fire TV Edition smart TVs to customers in the U.S. and Canada. As a first step in this venture, Best Buy began selling 4K and high-definition Fire TV models from Toshiba and Insignia earlier this summer.

Retailers have been introducing third-party-operated store-in-store shops and services for years. JCPenney introduced its first store-in-store Sephora stores a dozen years ago. Walgreens announced an alliance with FedEx last year in which FedEx drop-off and pickup locations would be introduced at thousands of Walgreens stores in the U.S.

“I think these nontraditional partnerships where retailers get together are going to become more and more the norm,” said Kotlyar, “because at the end of the day, retailers are looking for traffic, whether it is traffic online or within the brick-and-mortar stores.”